


Adequatio Intellectus et Rei

by SymbioticAntithesis



Category: Death Note
Genre: Dreams, Gen, Pre-Slash, Psychological Themes, Supernatural Elements, spiritual elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-16 02:17:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/856619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SymbioticAntithesis/pseuds/SymbioticAntithesis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The prologue to a long-since abandoned chaptered fic exploring the relationship between L and Light.</p>
<p>Original summary: <i>With his greatest adversary out of the way, Yagami Light continues to create his perfect world.  But when L starts to appear in Light’s dreams, Light begins to question his ideology . . . and his sanity.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Adequatio Intellectus et Rei

**Author's Note:**

> This is old. From, like, 2009. I did not re-read it for grammar/spelling so all mistakes are from my 2009-self.
> 
> Adequatio Intellectus et Rei - Latin; Correspondence of the Mind and Reality

**Prologue**

**Fiat Justitia et Pereat Mundus**

_“let justice be done, and the world shall perish”_

 

He was walking down a dim hallway, the lights were shimmering, wavering, casting uncertain shadows on the walls.  With each step he took, darkness crept closer behind him, and the scenery ahead of him was unchanging.  The end of the corridor was indiscernible and it remained so no matter how long, how fast he strode forward.  It may have frightened any other person, but it didn’t frighten _him_.

 

Because he was God.

 

He was Kira.

 

And God was afraid of nothing.

 

Holding himself tall, proud, he continued down the faintly lit hallway, unafraid of the encroaching darkness, unafraid of the shadows, unafraid of the endless corridor.  He was confident in the fact that nothing would touch him.  After all, with his greatest adversary done away with, whom else was there to defy him?

 

No one.

 

He would make his utopia, rid the world of its filth, its rot, and what was left afterwards . . . would be perfection.

 

Per-fec-tion.

 

The word itself was beautiful; it rolled off the tongue so easily and he had to suppress a grin from forming on his lips.  Everything would be perfect, he knew; there was no one to challenge his authority, his intelligence.  And he was the _epitome_ of perfection.

 

So it only followed that his world will also be perfection.  After all, _he_ was going to rule over it as a God, as Kira.

 

A glorious new order will follow.

 

And no one was standing in his way.

 

So despite the lackluster scenery around him, he strode forward confidently.  His world _will_ come to fruition, and damn anyone who tried to stop him.

 

As the blank walls passed him by, he noticed that, ever so subtly, the corridor was narrowing until it abruptly came to a halt; a door stood in front of him and there was another to his left and one more to his right.  He glanced over his shoulder and found, to his amusement, that the rest of the corridor had vanished; if he wanted to move forward, he would have to pick one of the three doors to open.

 

He stood for awhile, examining the doors.  All of them were made of what looked uncannily like marble yet each one had its own unique designs and engravings and he puzzled over them.

 

The door to his left depicted a beautiful woman in the classic Greco-Roman style.  She holds herself with dignity and sophistication and clasps a double-edged sword in her right hand while in her left, a scale.  A blindfold covers her eyes as she takes a step forward.  Etched into both upper corners of the door are suns and behind her there are symbols of the four seasons.  By her feet are rows and rows of tombs, a city that was being heralded by an angel who floats above the woman, wings fanning out, embracing the cloud it was resting on.  Rising from the tombs is a young girl holding a child and an elderly man, answering the call of the cherub’s horn.  There were delicate strokes by the bell of the trumpet the angel held signifying a light breath of air.  While the angel was also in classic Greco-Roman style, the city of tombs and the awakened dead were a sketchy scrawl.  It was juxtaposition, he assumed, of the divine and the damned.  On the lintel were gothic-like letters spelling out the word ‘justice’.

Turning to the door to his right, he saw a large wheel imbed with gold filigree, outlining the twelve symbols of the zodiac.  A woman, also blinded, stands behind the wheel and her wings, head, and hands touch the wheel in seven places.  Anubis, in the form of an elegant dog perches at the top of the wheel.  In the top right hand corner was the moon in its waning gibbous.  Underneath the woman are violent waters from which two sea serpents emerge, supporting the wheel while binding her feet at the same time.  This door was labeled ‘life’.

Then he finally turned his attention to the door before him.  There is a tower with seven stories, its foundations set in sand.  The top of the tower, the seventh tier is frozen in its plummet towards the ground.  A set of stairs spiral around the tower but abruptly disappears by the fifth level.  There is a gothic door on the fifth story and a square door on the fourth.  A three-headed dog guards the foot of the tower, its paws sinking into the soft sand.  Flames, erupting seemingly from nowhere, leap from the sand, while a phoenix flees from the demolished top of the tower.  Written at the top of this door was the word ‘truth’.

He had to ponder for only a moment before he took a ( _damnig_ ) step towards the door of Truth; after all, _Kira_ was Justice and he knew his purpose in Life explicitly.  He realized then that none of the doors had a handle or a knob.  He reached out a hand anyway and automatically, he heard a distinct clicking of a lock unlatching and the door of Truth slowly creaked on its non-existent hinges.

Gently pushing the door open, he stepped across the threshold and what met him was darkness, nothing else.  Disappointed, but hiding it deftly, he made a move to turn back but he heard a chime echo somewhere from within the darkness, an echo so melancholic yet eerily melodic that he was entranced by the sound.  His hand slipped off the door and he took another step into the room.

 

The door slid shut and he was suddenly engulfed in shadow.  The light from the hallway, though dim to begin with, was swallowed immediately.  He could see nothing around him and he could feel the darkness pressing onto him, suffocating him.

 

But still, he was not scared.

 

He took a bold step forward and just like that, quite suddenly, all of his senses were overloaded with feeling: the smell of blood, the sounds of screams, the taste of copper, the feel of density, the sight of human carnage.  An involuntary gasp escaped his lips, as he stumbled backwards, his hands pressed against his ears in a vain attempt to block out all this _feeling_.  Then, just as quickly as it came, it all disappeared.

 

Slowly, he looked up and his eyes widened, almost imperceptibly, in surprise.  Heaps of bones, ash, and discarded human body parts—some still dripping with fresh blood while others were rotting away slowly, the skin and flesh barely hanging onto the bone, limbs twisted grotesquely—surrounded him.  Corpses with mouths open in a perpetual scream, eyes wide in fear, some giving him a condemning look.

 

_This is all your fault_.

 

Skulls cracked open, others with half of its face eaten away, its eyeball dangerously hanging by a few tendons, tongue lolling out of its open mouth.

 

The carnage carried on for as far as he could see on all sides, as the door he just entered through had mysteriously vanished, and the smell of rotting flesh assuaged his nostrils.  He wrinkled his nose in disgust.  _This_ was what he was saving the world from: evil, wrongdoing, corruption.  The hideous sights only made him believe more strongly that what he was doing was _right_.  The rot of the world was preventing those who were good from _being_ good.  Those who were evil were condemning everyone else to hell and he didn’t think it fair for those who were pure at heart.

 

No, all criminals deserved to die.  They were stunting the growth of a perfect society, a perfect _world_ , _his_ world, and only he—he who owned the death note, the most ingenious invention in history—was capable of doing it.

 

He glanced around again, briefly, and noticed that there was a narrow path in front of him covered with a thin layer of dust, but free of the blood and body parts that otherwise surrounded him.  He took another step forward and started to walk amongst the decay.

 

Rats, ravens, and other vile vermin scuttled to and fro amidst the carcasses.  He sometimes heard a sharp crack of bone or the sound of tearing flesh in the distance but he ignored it and continued on.

 

A shadowy outline of a person started to gradually appear far ahead of him.  Eyes narrowing, he unconsciously slowed his pace, but the figure continued to draw closer, even if the legs of the shadow did not move.  When the figure was standing a few yards in front of him, only then did he realized that this person, this man, was shockingly familiar: pale skin, lanky figure, hunched back, unruly black hair, baggy jeans and an equally baggy white long-sleeved shirt . . .

 

It was L.

 

The only difference, he noticed, was the black cloth that covered the detective’s usually large, obsidian eyes.

 

A blindfold.  Why did it seem so familiar?  Where had he seen it before?

 

Blinded?  Blind fortune, blind justice . . .

 

The doors.  The doors he had practically forgotten about.  Then he realized: The Wheel of Fortune and the Lady Justice.  Of course, it was so obvious, how could he have forgotten?  But what had been on the door he had walked through?  No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t remember which was frustrating, embarrassing, and shocking all at once as he had always prided himself with his eidetic memory.

 

He shook his head to clear his thoughts and looked back up to see L start to slowly part his lips, his tongue darting out from between them.  And he couldn’t help but stare at the movement, entranced.  Then L started to form a syllable, letting it lovingly roll off his tongue.

 

_Ki-_

No sound escaped from the detective’s throat, but he knew what L was saying, what L _intended_ to say. He unwillingly took a step back.

 

But . . .

 

L was _dead_.  He got rid of the annoyingly perceptive bastard and he was free to continue his cleansing of the world, free to rule it as God, as Kira.  So why did he feel a sudden urge to turn around and walk away?  No . . .  He wanted to run.  Run.  Run like a coward.  But for some reason, he remained where he was.

 

The raven-haired man then started to form the next syllable on his lips, opening his mouth wider, his tongue lightly brushing against the roof of his mouth to create it.

 

_-ra_

 

L pulled a hand out of his pocket and lifted it to his face.  His fingers delicately pinched the fabric of the blindfold, and he slowly started to pull the material away from his eyes.

 

Then and only then did he feel terror shoot through his veins.  His heart—he still had one?—stopped for the briefest moment then started to race at an unfathomable speed.  But _why_?  It was unlike him to back down from a challenge.  Why was he afraid of _L_?  L was gone, L was _dead_ , L was _no longer a threat_.  L was—

 

—speaking again.

 

_ This _ _is your legacy._

But what was that supposed to mean?  All he could see were corpses, corpses of criminals, he was sure, because they were the only ones who deserved to die.  Besides, L wouldn’t— _didn’t_ —understand the reasons for Kira in the first place.

 

L had called him a murderer, evil.

 

L had been an adversary, albeit an extremely intelligent one, and just another obstacle that he had surpassed.

 

L was dead.

 

L was—

 

—still slowly removing the blindfold.

 

He suddenly realized with a jolt that he didn’t want L’s eyes revealed.  Those dark, calculating irises, he didn’t want to see them.  He didn’t want—

 

L opened his mouth again as the black cloth fluttered to the ground.

 

_You lose._

 

He tried to swallow the sudden urge to scream that threatened to tear out of his throat.

 

**_I_ **

****

A gunshot, a fleeting silence.

 

**_don’t_ **

****

But a choked, guttural scream still escaped him.

 

**_want_ **

****

A sound so terrible that he felt his very bones shudder in defiance and tears unexpectedly formed in his eyes.

 

**_to_ **

****

He fell to his knees, his hands cradling his head.

 

**_die_ **

****

What was happening?  Why did he feel so broken, so lost?  Why was he _afraid?_   Whywhywhy _whywhywhywhywhy_

Something cold was pressed against his forehead, but he didn’t even bother looking up; he was trembling too much to care.

 

Cold, he was so cold.  He gripped his arms closer to himself in a vain attempt to ward off the chill; he couldn’t control himself.

 

He trembled involuntarily and even without looking at L’s face, he simply _knew_ what was said:

 

_I shall see you in Hell._

 

The sound of the safety being removed, the cocking of a gun, and—

 

—blinding white hot pain then—

 

Yagami Light woke with gasp of shock.  He was clutching at his bed sheets, unconsciously searching for an anchor to reality.  A bead of sweat trickled down the side of his face.  He sat up slowly, trying to control his frantic breathing and his erratic heartbeat.

 

It had felt so real.  The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck were standing on end, and he could still smell the last vestiges of blood and rotting flesh, could still _taste_ the fear. 

 

A cold, hard barrel of a gun against his forehead.

 

He ran his hand through auburn locks, uncharacteristically nervous.

 

L was in his dream.

 

L, who died not even a week ago.

 

_Why_ was he dreaming of that damned detective?

 

He was _dead_.  Rem had killed him, wrote his name in the death note.

 

Fuck, he had _held_ L in his arms as he died.

 

And yet the bastard was still haunting him.

 

It didn’t make any sense, _still_ didn’t make any sense even as he turned the dream over in his mind.

 

One the one hand Light felt that he should simply disregard the dream as simply a dream; after all, how could something that happened in his subconscious be real?  But on the other hand . . .  He could still remember everything vividly, from the dim, never-ending hallway to the grotesque heaps of rotting bodies to the very moment L shot him point blank.

 

He unintentionally shivered.

 

Light _hated_ guns, more so after L had forced his father into tricking Light to admit that he was Kira.  Which was absolutely pointless since Light didn’t even have his memories of the death note at that time.  Nevertheless, it had terrified him; having your own _father_ point a gun straight at your forehead—just like the dream L had done to him—had been downright frightening.  He hated how his father actually agreed to the trick but he absolutely _loathed_ L for stooping to such a level simply to garner a confession.  Then again, the socially defunct detective probably didn’t know any better in the first place.

 

Damn him.  Damn him for messing with his mind.  Damn him for actually being at the same intellectual level as him.  Damn him for having _existed_.

 

But it wasn’t that he regretted killing L; not in the least—he needed to be eliminated so that’s what Light had done: gotten rid of the enemy.

 

It was simply because Light had never found anyone he could converse with, relate to so ardently that sometimes—only sometimes—he felt himself _missing_ L, if only for the convoluted conversations they always had which were always full of lies and deceit.

 

Well, fuck.

 

He flopped back down on his bed, having finally calmed his nerves.

 

Another part of him, a very miniscule part of him, felt as if the dream was a warning.  He never had dreams this vivid, had never woken up in such a state before . . .  What was its meaning?  Was it even important?  Did he _need_ to think about it this much?

 

Light sighed and closed his eyes.  Maybe not.  He was probably over-analyzing.  After all, it was only a dream.

 

So, Light allowed himself to slip back into unconsciousness, refusing to dwell any longer on something that was unimportant.

 

The next time Light woke, he didn’t even remember the dream.

**Author's Note:**

> This will likely remain as is. I doubt I'll be picking it up again. But in the rare chance that I will, I'm hoping it'll be as awesome as I intended it to be.


End file.
